Merisotis then rightly points out that what the Education Department does won’t necessarily match up with what the Labor Department does, despite all of the recent talk about gainful employment. Both departments are detached from federal immigration policy even though both are affected by the influx—and innovations—of immigrants.

So Merisotis proposes official collaboration.

He doesn’t want to simply merge the Education and Labor departments. (That idea has been struck down before, and rightly so, he says.) Instead, he wants to combine the Education Department with the Employment and Training Administration at the Labor Department, the “talent recruitment functions” of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service at the Homeland Security Department and the Office of Head Start in the Health and Human Services Department.

Without getting too into the weeds here, the idea is to create cradle-to-grave (or, at least, productive adulthood) talent development.